To the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness, though we have rebelled against Him.” – Daniel 9:9

I’m moving back to my Blogger site. I don’t know why, but I have struggled to write here. Maybe its TOO clean. Blogger has some fun, new templates, and its all set up.

Unfortunately, its not as easy to transfer posts from WordPress TO Blogger as it was to transfer from Blogger to WordPress. So I haven’t figured out what I am going to do about that yet. But please come and join me 🙂

You’d pretty much expect that these two girls are sisters or cousins…that they have the same grandmother, right? But it goes on.

Molly: My grandma is a widow.

Emma: My grandma lives with my grandpa.

Molly: My grandma has a two story house

Emma: My grandma has a one story house.

These aren’t the same women, are they? This may not matter to you. It would certainly matter to them, and it would certainly matter if you were the one at the school who was responsible for handing over these girls to the right grandmas who were picking them up after school.

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Today was Trinity Sunday. It’s a special day in the liturgical year. It is a day where we say the Athanasian Creed. It is usually too long to say every week, but it is a clear, repetitive proclamation of who

Christians believe God is, the doctrines taken from the Bible. It starts out and ends with a clear

proclamation that whoever does not believe this, is not saved. While many denominations claim to have no use for creeds — that is fine. They don’t have to say it. They do have to believe it to be truly Christian, because the Athanasian Creed was created in order to clarify what is orthodox Christianity, and what is heresy.

We live in a world where there are many religions that claim to know God, and even claim to know Christ. The Muslims hold Christ up as a good prophet. Even the Jews sometimes will state that. The Hindus even claim that He was possibly an incarnation of Brahma. The Mormons claim that He was the eldest spirit brother of all of us – who are all spirit children of the Father God of this planet. The Jehovah’s Witnesses confess that He is the Archangel Michael.

In this world, many want to state that there are a multitude of ways to be saved, and that believing in Jesus is only one of them. Even the Pope John Paul II stated that Muslims and Jews who were obedient and good would enter into heaven.

The fact of the matter is this is all false. And the reason that this is false is that if there were ANY other way to be saved, why would God have sacrificed His only Begotten Son? Why would He have put Him through being conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, CRUCIFIED, DIED, and BURIED? He LOVES His son. He also loved us and knew that there was only one way that we sinful, rebellious people could be made at peace with Him. Not anything we could do — like good works or nice thoughts. But ONLY the blood of one truly innocent…truly God…truly man could pay for our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

And if this is the case, and it is, to proclaim that there are other ways, that other faiths who say that Jesus was a wise man, a good prophet, an incarnation of their high God — is to spit in the face of the real God who loved us so much that He did send Christ to die for us. To say Jesus is a good prophet, when Christ confessed Himself that He is God, is saying that Christ is not who He says He is. That He is a liar (John 8). That what He did for us isn’t important.

We may think that we are being loving and open-minded when we are open to “other ways of salvation.” When we claim that all roads lead to God. But if God could not let it be so — if He crucified His Son for us, when there were other “equally valid” religions claiming different ways to salvation, we are not being loving. We are being liars. We are not helping those who do not yet recognize the truth. We are not helping them get to the right God. The one who loves them so much that He sent His ONLY Son from eternity to take on flesh to die for them and rise for them. Who has the power to take them to the home they belong in.

Rebekah at Concordian Sisters of Perpetual Parturition has a very good post to keep in mind here called “Friending.”

She makes a great point.

Often, pastors’ families are encouraged to not get too close to the congregation. Sometimes, after being hurt a few times, we back away from people. Sometimes, members of the congregation don’t want to let us into their lives. I’ve experienced all three situations. But that doesn’t mean that no one is friend material, or that you won’t find friends somewhere in the congregation or in the community.

Be kind, be loving, be open — with the love of Christ — who was open and loving despite having his heart broken so many times by those he came in contact with — and pray for peace and friends. And always feel free to remind me of that, as well. 🙂

* 90% of the pastors report working between 55 to 75 hours per week.
* 80% believe pastoral ministry has negatively affected their families. Many pastor’s children do not attend church now because of what the church has done to their parents.
* 33% state that being in the ministry is an outright hazard to their family.
* 75% report significant stress-related crisis at least once in their ministry.
* 90% feel they are inadequately trained to cope with the ministry demands.
* 70% do not have someone they consider a close friend.
* 50% have considered leaving the ministry in the last months.
* 50% of the ministers starting out will not last 5 years.
* 1 out of every 10 ministers will actually retire as a minister in some form.
* 94% of clergy families feel the pressures of the pastor’s ministry.
* Over 1,700 pastors left the ministry every month last year.

The Fuller Institute, George Barna, and Pastoral Care Inc. 2009

I can definitely say that some of these statistics apply to us, though because my husband does not work 55-75 hours per week (closer to 45-50), he is a very present father and husband, I don’t see the strain on the part of my children. They tend to really like being pastor’s kids, and they both have strong faith.

The strain on me is a completely different story. The lack of friends both for the pastor and his wife, and his kids can be a strong reality. We have only felt less of that in the last few years. The pain of seeing your husband hurt by the people that he serves can be very powerful as well.